Why you keep Putting the Weight Back on

Reasons why you retain weight - yes we are talking yo-yo dieting today and why your diet doesn’t work  in the longterm.

They say that the last 10% of any job is the hardest and takes the longest… and when it comes to weight management, that last slog is keeping off the weight for good.

Dieting works because you control things for a while and the results naturally happen, but then we go back to our normal lifestyle and… well things turn to shit right?

Outside of food choices though, there are psychological reasons that our body retains weight. Here are a few…

1. You use fat to hide behind. Layers of fat are like a protective layer you feel safe under. Example: If you’ve experienced sexual abuse or unwanted sexual attention it would be safer to hide your body and fat does that.

2. You use fat to get attention. You might have felt ignored or neglected as a child and feel like you need to be bigger, take up more space to be noticed and cared for.

3. You need fat to be bigger and stronger. You might have felt powerless as a child, perhaps you witnessed or experienced abuse and thought ‘if only I were bigger I’d be able to protect myself / my mother etc.’

4. You need to be big to be healthy. Perhaps you were sickly as a kid and you were encouraged and celebrated for putting on weight. You learned that putting on weight is good and gets you positive attention.

5. You need to eat while it is available. Food scarcity can put your mind into survival mode where you feel like you need to eat now and build yourself up in case it happens again. This can carry over from past lives also, there are many fascinating stories.

6. You need to rebel against someone, often a parent. Perhaps your parent had an idea of how the perfect daughter looked and in an act of rebellion you took control of your body by putting on weight. Anorexia is widely viewed as a disorder of taking self control, while obesity is viewed as personal weakness 😢, they could be more alike for some.

7. You need food and body mass to keep yourself grounded. Sometimes we can feel like we are not in our bodies.  Food brings us back to our senses and makes us momentarily come back to our bodies. We may also feel like the more body mass we have the more physical we are with grounded presence.

8. The lack of body mass is an existential shock to your system. Similar to when you have a lot of hair cut off and you go to touch it and it’s not there (long haired ladies in particular know this feeling!). The concept of you not being all there has an emotional and mental reaction of fear, a feeling that part of you is very literally missing.

9. Your weight is an external indicator of ‘I’m not ok’. When we feel bad inside it can sometimes be difficult to us to feel like we’re being taken seriously because the pain isn’t visible. Pain that can’t express itself through words and feelings comes out through the organs. Putting on the weight can be there outward cry for help when you’re not quite able to express the feelings verbally.

10. You are using fat to punish yourself and your body. You feel such self loathing and low self-esteem that you need a reason to direct it outwardly.  By putting on the weight and the layer of fat you can tell yourself ‘see, you are *insert horrible words here* It becomes a justification for the low-self worth and a vicious cycle; you’re fat because you’re worthless, you’re worthless because you’re fat’ 

I hope that you’ve found this helpful and you can start to understand what may be happening at the DEEPEST level of your consciousness around your body.

I’d love to know which one(s) resonate with you? Feel free to get in touch (FB, Insta, Email).

Everyone deserves a body they love and to maintain a weight that’s authentic to them 💗